I got inspired to build on by your recent article.
I happened to have some inline wheels and a motor from a small drill press
Iíd picked up for less than 10€ with the intention of converting it into an
oscillating spindle sander.

What I didnít have was good quality plywood of the right thickness to
simply copy yours, so I set about designing one around some scraps of
9 mm ply, 1x4Ē and 2x4Ē cut offís, and a few other bits. Turned out all
right I thought, and runs like a dream.

I didnít quite understand why you didnít mount the driving wheel
directly on the motor, so decided to do so, and to use the motor mount
for tensioning the belt. I liked your belt alignment method, but
couldnít fit it neatly in my arrangement, so settled on a variant with a
pivoted arm activated by a bolt and nut embedded in a distance piece
slightly thicker than the arm. Not much else to add I think, except that
the trick is, of course, to get the layout dead right from the start.

I did this by first turning the wheels (and no, I didnít have the guts
to do so on the table saw, but used the lathe and disk sander), and
checking the design with these and a belt, before proceeding with the
actual construction.

I had planned to keep the two halves of the body aligned by four dowels
and keeping them together using bolts with wing nuts, but got lazy and
ended up using four furniture screws that do both jobs instead. It means
having to use a hex key when changing belts, but not much of a problem I
thought.

I hope you like it, and as I said all for 7.5 ß for a motor with switch
and all, a few pence for bolts, screws and glue, and scraps that would
otherwise have ended in the bin.

All the best

Jens Larsen

Matthias comments: I did, at length, consider putting the drive wheel
directly on the motor shaft, but most of the motors I have available are
open framed motors, with not very long shafts, and pulling in cooling
air near the drive shaft. So I figured putting the motor behind the
sander was the safer choice